We arrived in San Francisco after a 12 hour long flight and having travelled back in time. We had left Auckland on Thursday 7th May at 7pm and arrived in SF Thursday 7th May at lunch time. Take that Marty McFly!

Pretty exhausted from the flight, we were gutted to see the mega queue for customs as we stepped off the airbridge. It took us 1.5 hours to even get our passports stamped. By the time we had got our bags, found a ride share bus, got stuck in traffic on the freeway, got into town and found the apartment it had been just over 4 hours of madness since alighting the plane.

Friends Rich and Dev had kindly offered to host us and it was great to see them again after not seeing them since they left Singapore a few years prior. Our timing worked out perfectly as they were off to Spain for 10 days, so in their absence we had the run of the apartment and the added fun of looking after their dog Bertie who is a great little character.

The team with Bertie, Thanks again guys, see you again soon!

If the kids thought that their hiking days were over since leaving New Zealand, they soon realised otherwise. The hills in this city are extreme to say the least, but pretty much everywhere is walking distance, so walk we did! We often wonder how they will react to walking in later life; will they be avid hikers or hold a massive grudge? Only time will tell!

There is so much to do in San Fran that you are almost overwhelmed with choice of sights to visit, obviously we had to ride the cable cars, visit Alcatraz and get on the Golden Gate bridge!

The world's last manually operated cable car system, another Icon of San Francisco.

The Bay Bridge, a double decked bridge that carries up to 240'000 cars per day!

Alcatraz was an amazing experience. The ferry ride over is about 20 minutes, giving you some amazing views of the bay, San Francisco and both the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, not to mention Alcatraz itself, which is weirdly stunning. The island is part of the huge national park system here and is a wildlife sanctuary to many birds. We arrived at the perfect time as a park ranger was just starting a free historical tour about the island itself and it’s different uses throughout history.

THE ROCK!

Looking back at the city and the Bay Bridge.

We then headed up to the prison for the audio guide. Teaching the twins when and where to pause the video was pretty painful, not least them keeping their earphones on! The tour is excellent and well worth the trip and money. The prison was grim say the least and hard to imagine how life really could have been there, although we were to find out a little more information.

In the gift shop there was an unusual event happening. A guy called Bill Baker, aged 83 was sat at a desk signing books. Bill was prisoner number 1259 in Alcatraz and was sent there in 1957. He is widely recognised as the LAST surviving convict. We immediately joined the short queue to meet him and ask him some questions, Kaitlyn was most excited and impressed to be meeting a real prisoner!

Q. What did you go to prison for? A. Originally for stealing a car, but I kept escaping, so they sent me here instead.

Q. Was it easy to escape the other prisons. A. Yes, very!

Q. Did you try and escape from here? A. No, I knew I couldn’t beat the ocean, hypothermia will get you, even if you made it across to shore, you would soon die. You can’t survive in there for any longer than 15 minutes.

Q. Do you believe the 3 men that did escape are alive today? A. I don’t know, only if they had a boat waiting for them, then maybe. But I know this, if they died, they died free men, they escaped and they were free.

Q. How was the food in prison?A. The food here was very good, I never missed a meal.

Meeting Bill Baker was an unexpected delight!

The ultimate naughty corner, the infamous 'Hole', every home should have one!

We would have loved to talk to Bill for longer, but others were in line behind us and the man had books to sell! He was kind enough to have a picture with us and sign our book before wishing us a nice day. Hopefully, Bill will not find himself on the wrong side of metal bars again anytime soon!

It’s not often the family have split up during our travels, but this particular day called for a boys v girls day. The girls went out for haircuts, shopping and ice creams at the famous San Francisco chocolate shop; Ghirardelli, whilst the boys test drove a Tesla!

For those not aware of who Tesla are or what they do, they make 100% all electric cars, and are Dans dream car! The car is awesome, with massive acceleration and loads of cool technical features, not to mention the highest safety ranking ever awarded to a car. On one charge you can travel from 275-300 miles and supercharge to full battery again in just 20 minutes. Amazing cars and technology, the future of all transport!

Father and son meet the future.

A privilege to finally drive a Model S. Thank you Elon for your vision!

There was once a time when Dan refused to talk to ‘randoms’, the change in his persona has been a complete U-turn and he now talks to anybody and everybody. When you do this, weird and cool things can happen. Returning from walking Bertie Dan got chatting to the young couple who had just moved into the apartment next door, they were putting their bins out into the street and were struggling to find anywhere to put all their rubbish. Dan offered any space we had in our bins and a conversation ensued. It turned out that Jonathan worked at Google and he was more than happy to show us around the famed Googleplex during his lunch hour! How could we turn down such an amazing opportunity? Jonathan, kindly met us a few days later and showed us around the visitor centre, highlighting some of the cool stuff Googlers get to do. The kids got to sit in the sleep pods, play in the ball pool and mess around with googles latest version of google earth, which is incredible. We then walked across to the main campus where guys were playing volleyball outside, free bicycles are all around campus for staff to use and people were walking their dogs that they take to work with them. Jonathan took us inside to the free cafe, all food on campus is free for staff and their guests. We had lunch together before he had to head off into a meeting. We were tempted to hide in the corner and hang out for a few hours, as Sergey Bryn and Larry paige (founders of Google) were due to make a speech on the stage just 10 metres from where we were having lunch! A brilliant trip out and one to be remembered. Thanks again Jon, it was so great to meet you, Bianca and dog Birdie!

Kaitlyn was most impressed and inspired by our trip.

All new Google operating systems are named after a dessert, in alphabetical order. The next one will be M, we have our bets running with Jon.

Meeting one of the famous Google street view cars, we also saw the self driving car actually driving around the campus too.

Our tech field trips didn’t stop there!

Weebly are the company we use to build this website, they make it super easy for total novices (like Dan) to build websites from scratch and they are also based in SF, so Dan decided to tweet them and try his luck.

An unexpected success!

Within a few minutes we had an office tour date set, amazing what a little cheek can achieve!

The offices were great. They, like Google, are redefining office culture on how to inspire and retain employees. Inside the offices are a free fully equipped gym, secret drawing room/library, bar with DJ stand, free canteen serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, pool table, fusball table, shuffle board, soundproofed music room, fully equipped with instruments, massage room, laundrette, and of course you can bring your pets to work too.

The family with our tour guide Kelly.

Just when we thought our office visits were over, we had another completely chance meeting and invitation to check out another one! We had treated ourselves to dinner at the local Italian restaurant Allegro Romano. Lorenzo the owner was so happy to see us walk in, he had seen the kids a lot on our walks with Bertie and was only too happy to make us welcome. Lorenzo is the perfect host and took time to chat with all of his guests and get to know them. Once he learnt that we had enjoyed visits to Google and Weebly he ran upstairs to bring his wife down to meet us.

Lorenzo poses with us in front of his wall of celebrities, which includes Brad Pitt!

Lorenzo's wife Kelly introduced herself and got chatting with us all, especially enjoying the kids company! She is the CEO of www.Zoosk.com, the largest online dating company in the world. She checked her schedule and invited us to come and take a tour of their offices 2 days later. Again the office experience was amazing and the kids were spoilt with free goodie bags which included a cool set of headphones each! Zoosk is set up much the same as the other tech office cultures with a pet policy, free food and drinks all day, chill out rooms, table tennis tables, TV rooms and more, everybody seemed happy at work and the atmosphere felt relaxed and friendly. Kelly's colleague Lynne was a fellow Brit and gap year traveller too, so many notes and stories were shared with her as we walked around the floor learning about the companies ethics and work processes.

Learning about and seeing these offices first hand was an incredible experience for all of us, especially for our daughters to meet such a successful female in such a male dominated corporate world. We thank everybody for taking the time to show us around. Let’s all hope that treating employees in such a way is a trend that filters into many other sectors as we all know how stressful and demoralising the general and traditional office culture can be!

CEO Kelly poses with us after showing us her awesome company Zoosk.

We arrived in San Fran feeling like tourists and left feeling like locals. We had such a great experience, loved the city, loved meeting so many new people and had the best time hanging out with old friends Rich and Dev.

Wow- you certainly do your touring in a different way. We were in San Francisco when we were stuck in America with the ash cloud and had a great time. Didn't get to do Goggle etc. though. Glad all seem ok still and your having fun.
Lots of loveXX Thanks for the birthday wishes x